Netflix And Chill: Lord Of Misrule (2023)

I might not have taken a chance on Lord Of Misrule if I'd remembered some of the past films from the director and writer. William Brent Bell has more good than bad in his filmography, just, but writer Tom de Ville was responsible for one of the worst mainstream modern horror movies of the last decade (although his screenplay for The Quiet Ones was then filtered so thoroughly through a trio of other writers that I barely mentioned him in my review of it). Anyway, it's thanks to the cast that I decided to give this a go. I am glad that I did.

Tuppence Middleton plays Rebecca Holland, a new minister in a small country village. The area has the usual traditions and local lore that you'd expect to encounter, especially if you have seen any folk horror movie over the years, but Rebecca tries to balance her traditional approach to ministering with the unique sensibilities of the locals. Things change for the worse when her daughter, Grace (Evie Templeton), goes missing, leading both Rebecca and her husband, Henry (Matt Stokoe), to believe that everyone around them is actually conspiring to ensure that there's not going to be a happy resolution to the situation. Jocelyn Abney (Ralph Ineson) should know how this feels, having lost his own son about twelve years ago, but he's resolute in his belief that everything happens for a very good reason.

There's nothing here that is going to surprise anyone with even the slightest experience with movies in this vein, but neither Bell nor De Ville ever attempt to convince viewers that they are looking to surprise anyone or create something startling new to add to this particular area of the horror landscape. It may be a bit too predictable and derivative, but at least there are a number of individual moments that all simply work. There's less chance to build a sense of dread when you know roughly what's going to happen, but Brett Detar tries to help with his musical score, and Simon Rowling's cinematography also helps add to the atmosphere.

The biggest plus point that the movie has is Ineson though, a fantastic actor who is used to great effect here. Brooding, often slightly ambiguous even as everything around him becomes much more overt and obvious, and with that distinctive voice making every word he utters feel like a tombstone being moved into place, Ineson is the essential ingredient that helps to make this a success. Not to take too much away from Middleton, Stokoe, and Templeton, or anyone else appearing onscreen. Everyone delivers solid performances, whether they are shown acting in a relatively normal manner, or getting ready to don masks and robes and join in with the kind of festivities that would amuse and please Lord Summerisle.

I liked this. A quick look around shows that most people didn’t, and the main complaint tends to be the familiar feeling that permeates it, as well as many claiming that it just isn’t scary. I can see their point, but I felt that the atmosphere and pacing worked well, even as I knew where we would be heading for the third act.

7/10

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Orphan: First Kill (2022)

Although this may seem like a sequel that has come along too late, and wasn’t anything that people were asking for, it must be said that the fanbase for Orphan has just grown and grown over the years. It is such a perfect mix of the camp and the twisted, despite also being completely unbelievable. I wasn’t sure if this second film, a prequel (as the title implies), would be able to sit alongside the first film, but I am happy to say that it does.

It all starts at the institute where Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) is being kept. She is very violent, smart, and dangerous. And it doesn’t take her long to figure out an escape plan. Out in the wide world, Leena decides to take on the identity of a missing girl named Esther, which allows her to get from Estonia to America, to then be “reunited” with her family. Can she keep up the facade for long though, and will she be tripped up by the fact that her potential mother (played by Julia Stiles) seems to suspect that something isn’t quite right.

Directed this time around by William Brent Bell (a man who has delivered numerous films that don’t exactly set the world alight, but who also seemed to pleasantly surprise many viewers with The Boy before spoiling things with Brahms: The Boy II), Orphan: First Kill isn’t the most inventive film, nor is it visually stunning (although there are some lovely shots here and there), but that doesn’t matter really, because the big selling point is the entertainingly deadly main character. It is a film saved by a middle section that absolutely understands how best to rework that central character.. There are a couple of fun twists, and everything is set up in a way that starts a clock running. Viewers know that Esther will need to act quickly, and they also know what she is capable of. 

The script, worked on by David Coggeshall developing the story and ideas of David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Alex Mace, has to tie in to the first movie, which is where it is weakest, but allows for some fun trickery with the details of a backstory that viewers will assume they already know. The notes are the same, but this is a very different tune being played.

Fuhrman, needing to be digitally de-aged this time around, is just as much fun in the role as she was last time. In fact, she’s arguably even more enjoyable to watch here, having less scenes that require her to hide her true nature. Stiles is equally enjoyable, pitching her performance perfectly at the level best suiting the tone of the material. Rossif Sutherland and Matthew Finlan (as “daddy” and “big brother”, respectively) aren’t quite as good, although the latter works very well in his scenes alongside Stiles, and it is a shame that the writers didn’t think to push things further. Have a bigger selection of characters to cause problems, have more troubling secrets hidden away under a civil and well-to-do exterior.

If you enjoyed the first movie then you should find enough to enjoy here. Although it ultimately fails to match the highs and surprises of Orphan, this makes an admirable attempt to give people what they want while trying to add one or two sudden turns. I don’t think a third film is possible, considering the timeline already covered, but if it is . . . I will check it out.

6/10

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Prime Time: Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

I'm not going to spoil anything that happened in the film, but The Boy was a pleasant surprise. A supernatural tale that became an enjoyable thriller, it managed to perfectly mix the silly and the effective in equal measure. It was no classic, but I'd happily recommend it to people looking for some tame entertainment. 

It certainly didn't need a sequel though. And it certainly didn't need a sequel as daft as this.

Katie Holmes and Owain Yeoman play the parents of a young boy named Jude (Christopher Convery). After the traumatic experience of having their home broken into, Jude stops speaking. They head off for a little convalescence, and happen to end up in the same location as Brahms, the doll that seemed to spooky and lively in the first movie. Jude grows immediately attached to Brahms, and wants his parents to abide by a number of rules that ensure people treat the doll as he likes to be treated. Things start to get increasingly tense within the family unit, and anyone trying to separate Jude and Brahms does so at their own peril.

Director William Brent Bell and writer Stacey Menear both return for this second doll-centric tale, and it's almost as if they resent some of the decisions they made in the first film. This decides to push things further, to remove any ambiguity, and to take viewers on a journey that ends with some moments that are so ridiculous, and so far removed from the first film that I'm surprised Bell and Menear even decided to use the name. You could argue that the developed backstory makes it obvious that this follows on from the first film, but all of that could have been tweaked (or, better yet, just dropped).

Yeoman is the more passive of the two adults, just following the lead of Holmes, who has to show stress and worry from her earliest scenes. Neither of the leads ends up faring well, considering the nonsense they have to work with, but it's Holmes who suffers the most, mainly due to her having to seem freaked out by the doll even before things start to get stranger and stranger. Convery is good enough in the role of Jude, spending a lot of the film almost shielding himself with Brahms, and it is always good to see Ralph Ineson pop up in movies recently, even when his role takes him to as silly a place as this one does. 

If you're morbidly curious about this after seeing the first film, let that morbid curiosity go. There's a minimum degree of technical competence throughout, saving it being the very worst of the worst, but it's a pretty terrible movie. All it does is undo the goodwill earned by the first film.

 

3/10

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Wer (2013)

Directed and written by the men responsible for The Devil Inside - THAT should have been my first warning sign. Possibly full of scenes shot to resemble found footage - THAT should have been my second warning sign. The third warning sign? Well, I guess you could take your pick from any of the moments during the first half hour that start to cause your spidey-sense to tingle.

Wer is an attempt to deliver a werewolf movie to the i-phone generation. It mixes faux-news footage with other recordings, while also using a standard shooting style that's so wobbly and irritating it may just as well be found footage. In fact, that stylistic choice is one of the biggest things working against the movie. Well, that and the fact that the leads are pretty annoying. Oh, and also that the story plays out predictably, with a reliance on occasional jump scares and a disappointing lack of anything to make it a truly memorable werewolf movie.

A.J. Cook plays Kate Moore, a lawyer who is defending a man named Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O'Connor) against murder charges. The murder was a particularly vicious one, hard to believe that it was committed by a human being at all, and it seems that Gwynek was arrested on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. The leading officer on the case, Klaus Pistor (Sebastian Roche), is convinced that they've got their man. Is Gwynek an ill man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is he capable of such a feral attack?

William Brent Bell needs to be stopped. He seems to be a man allowed to direct movies on the basis that executives don't think movies need actual direction nowadays. Oh no, not at all. This is the marvellous age of movies made on HD cameras and even smartphones. Just point in the direction of your protagonists and forget about anything else.

But that's not how it works, so why can't someone tell Bell that. This particular story isn't told through found footage, not entirely anyway, so why he insists on using that aesthetic for every scene is a stylistic choice that shows, in my opinion, his severe limitations as a film director. The script, which he co-wrote with Matthew Peterman, is also lacking some major amount of polish, but it doesn't help that the cast deliver their lines with little to no enthusiasm, with the sole exception of Roche, who makes the whole experience a bit more bearable.

Cook is poor, Simon Quarterman is worse, Vik Sahay is on a par with Quarterman, and those are the three characters that viewers have to spend most of their time with. Quarterman plays an expert who is helping on the case, and also an ex-partner of Cook, while Sahay is some kind of PR guru that all great lawyers must have. O'Connor isn't bad in the role of Gwynek, mainly thanks to his physical performance.

One or two scenes save the film from being completely unwatchable, but even those scenes are almost spoiled by some horribly inept CGI gore that wouldn't look out of place in a console game. That's a shame because there's some computer work elsewhere that enhances moments of slight physical transformation, decent work that hints at how impressive this material could have been, in more capable hands.

Some people will still find this enjoyable enough. I am hoping to never have to see it again, and I'll be very apprehensive when about to watch any future movies from William Brent Bell.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/WER-J-Cook/dp/B00LM4A21A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1411734877&sr=8-2&keywords=wer